'The Car Man' review — Matthew Bourne’s sultriest dance show is gripping pulp fiction

Read our review of The Car Man, now in performances at Sadler's Wells to 29 August.

Summary

• Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man comes to Sadler’s Wells
• The sultry dance show combines Bizet’s Carmen and film noir
• Ashley Shaw and Will Bozier shine as the sexually charged lovers

First performed in 2000, The Car Man, Matthew Bourne’s sultriest show is a mash-up of the Bizet opera and the 1946 film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (it’s also possible to detect echoes of Macbeth). It was the first narrative dance piece to feature an openly bisexual protagonist, bringing out desires that wouldn’t have been permitted in 19th-century opera or 1940s Hollywood. Originally billed “An Auto-Erotic Thriller” and featuring sexual frenzy, murder, and male prison rape, it’s definitely one for adults, and it could be considered Bourne’s equivalent of Kenneth MacMillan’s Austro-Hungarian royal psychodrama Mayerling.

Set in the 1950s in the dusty, ironically named town of Harmony, with a largely Italian-American population of 375, the locale is a garage with a diner attached owned by the sleazy Dino (Danny Reubens). Drifter Luca (Will Bozier) responds to the “Man Wanted” sign and at first is an honourable presence, defending the sensitive young Angelo (Harry Ondrak-Wright) from bullying and teaching him boxing skills, but it wouldn’t do for him to be too much of a hero.

Set to Rodion Shchedrin’s “Carmen Suite” (after Bizet’s Carmen) supplemented by original compositions by Terry Davies (conducted by Benjamin Pope), Bourne’s characteristically vibrant choreography features Spanish, Latin American and musical theatre influences, with a whirl of swishing skirts calling to mind West Side Story, Grease (before it was sanitised), and early Bob Fosse. The macho culture of the garage with bare, pumping arms, clenched fists, and the women encouraging the displays of braggadocio and jealous rages is a powder keg waiting to explode.

Ashley Shaw shines as Lana, a woman stuck in a passionless marriage, who, in attitude and styling, is very like Mayerling’s petulant and insinuating Mary Vetsera transported to the Deep South. It’s all about primal sexual attraction rather than emotional connection and Luca and Lana consummate their attraction in a rampant display of animal passion, immediately after which Luca takes Angelo for a backseat ride and the entire ensemble comes together in a frenzied bacchanal of steam heat (it doesn’t really matter who one’s partner is under such circumstances).

Bozier’s Luca is handsome, charismatic, and supremely athletic, if more clean-cut (and closeted) Rock Hudson than seething, menacing Marlon Brando. In his solo to the “Habanera”, he attracts plenty of attention from both sexes and teases the men with his jumps (we have already seen that not everyone in this macho establishment is entirely heterosexual). It’s Ondrak-Wright's Angelo, left to take the blame for Luca and Lana’s actions, who gets most character development, and Anna-Maria de Freitas is touching as the loyal Rita. Together they dance with a doomed purity.

Lez Brotherston’s multitiered set design is claustrophobic and authentically greasy, and the costumes are both colourful and feel well-worn, complemented by Chris Davey’s woozy lighting. Making a feature of sweat and heavy breathing, it’s well-oiled pulp fiction in dance form and damn gripping stuff.

The Car Man is at Sadler's Wells to 29 August. Book The Car Man tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: The Car Man (Photos by Johan Persson)